Agriculture: A Must for the Millennium Development Goals

By Michele Learner

February-March 2008

Download in pdf

Most Zambian farmers use buckets to irrigate their crops, but farmers with access to foot-operated pumps earn up to six times more. photo by Margaret W. Nea

Robson Mauzeni, 62, and his wife Martha, 59, are farmers in rural Zambia. They are both HIV positive. A couple of years ago, their health had deteriorated and they were too sick to work their fields, where everything must be done by hand. Whatever they can grow is the only source of food for themselves, their disabled adult son and two granddaughters who live with them. In 2005, they were able to begin taking antiretroviral (ARV) medications, and their health improved significantly. 

But the challenges of being farmers in a developing country remain. The Mauzenis grow maize, Zambia's staple crop, but they needed better nutrition so that their ARV medications would work properly. They wanted to diversify their crops, both for themselves and to sell at the local market. So with an initial microcredit loan of $6, they bought seeds to grow tomatoes, pumpkins, and broccoli rabe. They hope to borrow another small amount to rent a pumping machine to irrigate the fields from a nearby water hole. In the meantime, Mr. Mauzeni irrigates with water that he carries in bucketfuls. He and his family simply hope that he will remain well enough to continue.

The Mauzenis's story illustrates why reducing global hunger and poverty will require progress in several areas. In the case of their family in rural Zambia, it means a health care delivery system, lifesaving medications, seeds to grow a diverse group of crops, a small loan for irrigation equipment, a modest income to buy foods they can't grow, school for the grandchildren.

Most of the world's poor people live in rural areas and earn a living by farming. Any long-term, sustainable solution to global hunger and poverty must focus on giving people the tools they need to support themselves and their children. International development assistance has helped the Mauzenis get vital medications and qualify for a modest loan to buy new seed varieties. Help in getting more efficient irrigation would also make a big difference. But their own hard work, under difficult circumstances and sometimes while very ill, supports their family. Better results from farming is their hope for the future.

Around the world, human needs vary, but the essentials are the same. That's why virtually every country has adopted a set of eight achievable goals to improve the lives and futures of millions of the world's poorest people by 2015: the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs include reducing hunger and extreme poverty, combating diseases like HIV/AIDS, ensuring environmental sustainability and creating a global partnership for development. Each goal has specific targets to measure progress – for example, cutting in half the number of people living on less than $1 per day. And, just like the needs they are meeting, the MDGs are interdependent: one can't be achieved without progress in the others.

Ultimately, improvements in agriculture will help achieve the MDGs simply because so many people depend on farming to earn a living.  The 2008 World Development Report reiterates: "Promoting agriculture is imperative for meeting the MDG of halving poverty and hunger by 2015."

Agriculture, Hunger and Poverty

Land is better than money or gold.
-Saraswati, formerly a landless laborer, southern India

photo by Celia Escudero Espadas

With so many poor people dependent on agriculture, the strongest, most powerful way to reduce poverty around the world is to devote more attention and resources to improving agriculture. Economic growth originating in agriculture is at least twice as effective in reducing poverty as growth that is based outside agriculture.

The Rural Development Institute tells the story of Saraswati, who lives in southern India and used to work in other people's fields, earning about $200 per year. That was only enough to feed her two young children one meal of rice gruel each day. Since receiving a small plot of her own land, Saraswati earns enough to feed her children well and send them to school. "The land has brought a drastic change in our life, and has given us the hope for the future," she says.

Reducing poverty and ensuring environmental sustainability are two of the MDGs addressed in a project in Guangxi, China, managed by the International Fund for Agricultural Development. 30,000 poor households received simple technology to turn animal waste into biogas energy. Not only is the new technology reducing greenhouse gas production and providing homes with energy for cooking and lighting, it gives families more time for income-generating activities since they spend less time gathering fuel. In the last five years, for example, farmers in one small village, Fada, began growing organic tea and have increased their production from 400 to 2,500 kilograms per day. Income in the village has quadrupled. Plus, the Guangxi region is saving more than 56,000 tons of firewood each year – equivalent to recovering at least 18,000 acres of forest.

Agriculture and Environmental Sustainability

Naturally there is a close link between agriculture and the environment, and nowhere is this connection seen more clearly than with climate change. Environmental degradation and climate change are already having far-reaching ripple effects. The most severe are seen in tropical regions of Africa, Latin America and India—places that already struggle with extreme poverty. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that in the Sahel region of West and Central Africa, the warmer and drier conditions have led to a shorter growing season. In the Ganges River watershed of India, the receding Himalayan glaciers are causing floods in the monsoon season and water shortages in the dry season.

Yet some of the impacts of climate change are less immediately apparent. Children are taken out of school to help families gather increasingly scarce fuel. Climate change is blamed for new disease patterns; for example, health care systems are struggling to respond to malaria in parts of East Africa where it's never been seen before. Climate change is a new complication in our efforts to achieve the MDGs.

New and intensive efforts are needed in the areas of agriculture and environmental sustainability. But it is possible to make rapid progress, as shown by a program in Nepal which offered small plots of damaged public forest land to poor rural households. The families were able to rehabilitate the land and also sell products like timber for additional income. Participants saw other improvements, as well. Mundra Bahadur Magar observed: "At the age of 10 our children had to collect forest products instead of going to school.… Because of the project we now have time for other activities. I am raising buffalo now, and conditions for the family have improved greatly now that I am making money by selling buffalo milk."

An assessment after five years found that the annual household income of participants had risen from $270 to $405, children's diets had improved, school attendance increased, and women saved 2 ½ hours daily that had previously been spent collecting fuel and fodder.

The project was a win for the environment too: at most sites, environmental conditions soon began to improve. After the first growing season, groundcover had expanded from 32 percent of the land to 50 percent, later reaching 100 percent. Biodiversity also increased; at one site, the number of plant species rose 86 percent.

Agriculture, Women and Health

 

Reducing global hunger means ensuring that both women and men have access to new agricutlural techniques and technologies. photo by Margaret W. Nea

In Africa, women produce about 80 percent of the food but usually do not have the right to own land. The Pan-African Parliament recently noted that the rural economy of nearly every African country depends on women, but generally laws or longstanding practices prevent women from making key decisions about land use. In Kenya, for example, "no title deed is transferred to the wife once the husband is deceased;" instead, the family land is given to the husband's parents to keep until his sons are adults.

Worldwide, women produce more than half of all food but own only 2 percent of the land. Of the loans that are available for agriculture, women receive just 1 percent. They receive less than their share of government extension services and have less access to more efficient farming techniques and labor-saving tools. Traditionally, women grow subsistence food crops, while men grow crops which can be sold for cash. Yet studies in several countries have shown that women, more than men, are likely to spend extra cash income on food for their children and other household needs. The 2008 World Development Report emphasizes the paramount importance of selling agricultural products: "Today, agriculture's ability to generate income for the poor, particularly women, is more important for food security than its ability to increase local food supplies."

Thus, MDG #3, achieving gender equality, is not just a social aspiration but a critical component of the fight against hunger and poverty. Some progress has been made, and certainly women's situations vary greatly from country to country, but much remains to be done. Too often there is more lip service than actual resources for gender equity. In 2001, nearly 23 percent of the World Bank's rural portfolio was composed of projects that addressed gender issues, but only 2.8 percent of the funding actually went to those initiatives.

The HIV/AIDS pandemic also affects agriculture in poor countries. In Zambia, where Robson and Martha Mauzeni live, young rural adults have been hit especially hard. Data show that of all Zambians in the age group 15 to 24 in 1990, 19 percent had died by 2000.

HIV affects the food security of entire farming households – people who are HIV positive and those who aren't. Adults who are ill often cannot work in their fields; others may lose work time to care for them; and those who die often are experienced farmers with a strong understanding of agricultural knowledge and conditions that they are unable to pass on. Research shows that poor households in which a member contracts HIV consume less food than they used to. Orphans often live with extended family members or grandparents who can have difficulty supporting them. Some countries have large numbers of "child-headed households," led by eldest siblings as young as age 11 or 12. Too often, these new heads of household do not have the skills or means to farm, leading to increases in hunger.

A Global Partnership for Development

Many of the MDGs call on developing countries to accomplish a great deal – from opening schools to creating good jobs to building passable roads. Poor countries cannot do this alone, which is why the eighth MDG calls on wealthier, developed countries to participate in a "global partnership for development."

In recent years, the United States and other developed countries have made commitments to increase development assistance and provide debt relief to poor countries. Some of the commitments have already been fulfilled. Unfortunately, however, agriculture has largely been left out of these increases in resources, if not left out of the discussions altogether.  

In the past two decades, total donor assistance for agriculture has fallen by two-thirds: from $11.5 billion in 1987 to $3.9 billion in 2005. France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States all give less aid to agriculture now than they have in the past. 

The World Bank notes that in agriculture-based countries, donors are "extraordinarily influential." In 24 sub-Saharan African countries, donor contributions represent at least 28 percent of agricultural development spending. In some countries, donor contributions made up more than 80 percent of the agriculture budget.  

The World Bank's 2008 World Development Report was its first devoted to agriculture in 25 years. When the last agriculture report was published in 1982, the World Bank was allocating more than 30 percent of its total lending to agriculture. By 2006, it was only 7 percent.

Developing countries themselves are often spending less on this sector than in the past. Countries considered agriculture-based (which include most in sub-Saharan Africa) spent about 4 percent of their budgets on agriculture in 2004, down from 10 percent in 1980. Yet up to three-fourths of their populations work in agriculture. This must change if we are to truly provide workable long-term solutions to global poverty. African countries who participate in the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) have made a commitment to increase their support for agriculture, with a target of 10 percent of government expenditures.

Some international organizations, governments, and nongovernmental organizations are calling for renewed focus and resources for the agricultural sector – both its problems and its potential for improving the lives of rural people. Private funding sources are also stepping up their involvement. Recently the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as part of its Agricultural Development Initiative, made grants totaling $306 million for agriculture projects designed to boost the yields and incomes of millions of small-scale farmers around the world. The largest grant went to the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.

But along with more assistance for agriculture, we need better assistance. Bread for the World supports the Global Poverty Act to make U.S. development assistance more effective by requiring a coordinated strategy -- linking aid, debt relief and trade policies -- to achieve the first MDG. In 2007, Bread for the World worked for reform of the commodity payments system, part of the U.S. farm bill. Trade-distorting commodity payments artificially lower world prices for various crops produced by poor farmers, impeding their efforts to sell them for a fair price.

Bread for the World Institute's 2005 Hunger Report, Strengthening Rural Communities, lists the key elements of effective research-based anti-poverty strategies for rural areas: reclaiming soil; managing water resources; diversifying crops and sources of income; creating stronger markets and infrastructure; recognizing the central role of women; and establishing safety nets for vulnerable people.

Agriculture has been credited with enabling ancient peoples to form settled communities and later civilizations. For most of the world’s population, it remains as critical as ever. The world already has the knowledge and technology necessary to cut hunger and poverty in half by 2015. That was the conclusion of the U.N. Millennium Project’s Hunger Task Force in 2000. We know what to do; we need the political will to get it done.

 

In Thailand as elsewhere, the livelihoods and future prospects of rural families are tied to improving the land and its products. photo by Celia Escuedeor Espadas